


On a train somewhere only we know

by BottomlessAbyss



Category: the GazettE
Genre: Angst, Exes, F/F, F/M, Heartache, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 13:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17426444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BottomlessAbyss/pseuds/BottomlessAbyss
Summary: Tumblr prompt request:A suggestion where they break, but still love each other and Takanori misses Kouyou desperately. Lots of angst and pain.





	On a train somewhere only we know

Nine years. It had been nine years since Takanori had physically last seen Kouyou, let alone speak to him, and it was the most jarring experience he has experienced in all his twenty-seven years of life.

Kouyou was beautiful – he always thought as such – but the years made him heart-stopping-stunning, and Takanori downed his fourth flute of champagne when his mouth kept growing dry whenever their gazes locked, his heart beating far too hard in his chest and skipping a beat with a flutter when he noticed Kouyou’s double-glance, too many glances to count.

He should have shredded the wedding invitation the moment he received it in the mail from Kouyou’s sister. He should have played coy and feigned that it must have gotten lost, or that his work schedule conflicted with the set date for the ceremony. Honesty was the best policy: maybe he should have declined and admitted that the very  _thought_  of the possibility of seeing her brother made him stove up like a knee-jerk reaction.

Of course, he hadn’t. Takanori had checked the little box that he would bring a plus one guest with him, called to RSVP – suffer through the loudest, sharpest squeal of happiness he’d ever heard with a fond smile – and look into booking a flight to Haneda’s airport. It wasn’t like he could lie himself out of it. He  _wanted_ to attend her wedding, and it fell around the perfect timing since he planned to visit his parents for the needed time off away from work.

Except, his plus one guest was no where within sight after a heated argument on the way to the airport; he’d left him to show up by himself, and that knee-jerk reaction was delayed and gave way for something that made his chest skitter instead of cave in panic or throw up a wall of defense. In a room full of people, Kouyou was all he saw. He hadn’t changed much; his face held elegance and maturity with all sharp angles, softened by small, subtle details Takanori remembered. Like the barely noticeable tilt of his head when something caught his attention, a small smile curling the left corner of his mouth first before the right followed immediately afterwards. His hair is so  _long_  now, it made Takanori’s fingers itch to card through it and see if it’s as soft to the touch as it looks and correct his loosened tie.

Instead, Takanori licked the lingering remnants of champagne from his lips as held Kouyou’s gaze from across the crowded room, passed his hand through his inky locks that he took down from its ponytail to spill over his shoulders and, gesturing to his own tie with careful movement to mime  _fix it_ , slowly smiled back.

Automatic knee-jerk reaction.

¤ ¤ ¤

Takanori drinks a lot of champagne that night because he needs it. Badly. It was a big, very miscalculated mistake, because when he found himself gravitating to meet Kouyou in the middle of the taller’s endeavor to thread himself between guest and stranger alike, eyes shimmering with determination and something unreadable beneath strings of tea light lanterns, he could only stare as Kouyou asked loud enough over the music, “Can I get you a drink?”

It was a mistake, because Takanori agreed so fast it made them both share a laugh that dispelled what tension tried to settle between them.

It was a mistake, because he needed someone to take him back to his hotel, and Kouyou’s mother was so happy to see him (them, together like old times), he didn’t have the heart to reject her. Not while she looked at him with such hopeful eyes when she requested he pay her a visit tonight. So, of course he went.

Of course, Kouyou was staying with his mother. Of course, he offered to drive him there. He was going that way, anyway.

 _Of course_ , he noticed that Kouyou was wearing a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand as he watched him drive.

“You’re married,” Takanori observed quietly with a hint of a small smile warming the slur of his voice.

“Engaged,” Kouyou corrected, catching the way Takanori’s eyebrows shot up in surprise after sparing him a glance to make sure he was okay. “For a couple of months, now.”

“No fucking way,” Takanori breathed, something falling in his chest to settle heavily in his stomach, taking his breath away, in that moment. “That’s– Kouyou, that’s…”  _That’s great_ , he wanted to say. He’s happy for him, truly. He just didn’t know how to get it out in the open in words and he was at a loss of them. At least, that was what he believed as he swallowed around the steady constriction of his throat that worked hard to force away the lump of emotion lodged there. It made his eyes prickle with wet warmth and he blinked once, twice, tipping his head back to keep anything from spilling with a soft tremor in his exhale.

Funny. He remembered a time when they had made shitty rings out of cellophane wrapping from their cigarette cartons the night before Takanori had to catch a flight that whisked him abroad for the university of his dreams and pressed promises in the form of a deep kiss into the palm of each other’s hands, Kouyou’s eyes focused on him with determination; soft round the edges by a love so… visceral, it was otherworldy. Nothing like anything Takanori had felt from another in his life.

Something that he never felt again with anyone else.

 _“You never fell out of love with him, did you,”_  the voice of his (ex?)boyfriend yells at him accusingly in his head, bouncing off the walls of his memory like a rubber ball.  _“I know you’re going to that wedding just because_ he _’ll be there. If he broke up with you, why are you even looking back?”_

But he wasn’t looking back. Losing your boyfriend was one thing. Losing your best friend is another. But losing both at the same time? Kouyou had been both, and there wasn’t a single word to describe anything like it, except a heartbreaking pain Takanori wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. Just emptiness, as empty as one could feel when they just… stopped talking after trying their hand to remain friends; as empty as the box of keepsakes he would dump out to reread handwritten letters over and over; as empty as his eyes when he’d press play one more time on his phone to hear the loving voice messages Kouyou had left him over time.

He had moved on. Wounds heal with time, and once he was sure that internal ache in his chest was tolerable enough Takanori dated around, saw other people and pushed those keepsakes he kept dear as far as he could under his bed to never touch again. Out of sight, out of mind, people say. But that was the problem. Kouyou was  _always_  on his mind, one way or the other. It was the little things, the smallest thing that seemed so unimportant enough to rouse a spark of familiarity yet made him smile to himself all the same before going on with his life. It was something he could live with.

But Takanori missed him. All the time. Sometimes, in the beginning, he missed him so desperately, the emotional ache was strong enough to bring a man to his knees and make him yield instead of fight against it. After so many years of silence, so much time spent on healing and focusing on himself and other areas of his life, that longing steadily reared its head in the silence of Kouyou’s car and Takanori rubbed at his eyes as subtly as he could. He never stopped missing him.

“Are you happy?” He asked quietly as the vehicle slowed to a stop at a traffic light, his eyes so full he feared they’d spill over if he blinked or looked anywhere else but at the roof of the car. It takes a moment to realize that Kouyou steers out of traffic to park on the side of the road and just… sit, the silence thick enough to cut with a knife.

“I don’t have any complaints, I think,” Kouyou softly admitted at long last, audibly swallowing around something that makes his voice tighten just for a moment. It’s gone as soon as it surfaces. “I care about her. She makes me feel content.”

Takanori nodded, only to flinch in surprise as a tear swiftly tumbled down the round of his cheek and Kouyou’s eyes followed it immediately. But what winded, what absolutely  _gutted him_ was the soft, tender gaze Kouyou regarded him with; a look resembling the way one looked at Christmas lights on a wintry night, weighed by a reflected ache Takanori believed wasn’t his place to assume; to think… to hope.

He forced a small smile. “Then that’s all that matters.”  It didn’t last long. Not with Kouyou’s hand covering his in his lap, intertwining their fingers after a pause of hesitance; squeezing his hand in his hold with a shaky exhale. If he felt tears fall and wet the back of his hand, roll over the curves of his knuckles, he didn’t say anything. And Takanori was grateful.  

Takanori had moved on. His life kept going with or without Kouyou by his side, and he found peace, acceptance, with that a long time ago. Kouyou wasn’t someone he needed, but who he wanted and god, did he want him. He always had. They weren’t the same person that they’d fallen in love with and he recognized that enough to know that his feelings evolved along the way with him, and his feelings remained unchanged.

He never had stopped loving him, even when he had been at his worst. He would love him for the rest of his life, and that… That, he was sure of.

He didn’t know how to do otherwise.


End file.
